SOURLANDS is getting closer to completion every day. For the past several weeks I have been focused almost entirely on editing, making revisions to the rough cut and polishing up parts that can still use some polish.

When you see SOURLANDS in a few months time, one of the characters you will meet is Mike Strizki, who lives in East Amwell in North America's first "solar-hydrogen house." Hydrogen is an expensive way to store renewable energy -- critics often say that it's so expensive that it remains a technology of the distant future -- but I read with interest today that Germany, which is making huge investments in solar and wind power, is now taking a fresh look at hydrogen as a way to store clean energy: